UKIP leader Nigel Farage told a packed public meeting on Monday in Suffolk that he was flabbergasted at the immigration problems in Peterborough.

Speaking to Paul Stainton on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire on Tuesday, he bemoaned a sense of “emnity” that he felt had developed in the city in the last ten years, which he attributed to the high level of immigration.

Mr Farage said: “I was amazed to see the sort of Polish quarter of the town, and to see the size of it, it’s rapid development, and how few people spoke English.

“But the worst thing was a sense of enmity that has grown up between much of the local population and the large numbers of Polish people living there.

“I think people get on together less well in Peterborough than they did ten years ago.

“We have since the war had a managed migration policy into Britain of thirty to fifty thousand people a year. Over the last ten years it’s averaged half a million people a year.

“You cannot assimilate new groups in society if they’re coming in at that level.”

The UKIP leader said that British people were being discriminated against in the workplace.

He said: “I met a 16 year old girl in Peterborough who applied for a job on a packing line and was told she couldn’t get a job because she didn’t speak Polish. I’m sorry but that simply isn’t right.”

Mr Farage believes the forthcoming county council elections will mark a pivotal moment in the evolution of his party.

He said: “I think May 2 is very important. It will really show across the whole of England whether this rise in the polls is fictional or real. I believe it is real. We’ve then got to see under the first past the post system just how many breakthroughs we can make.

“If we’re going to mount a challenge for the 2015 General Election, we’ve still got a lot of work to do. We’ve still got to professionalise aspects of the Party.

“I’m not under any illusions about that, but I do believe we’re on our way.”